On Jun 29, 2005, at 2:20 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
On 29 Jun 2005 at 13:29, Christopher Smith wrote:
The piece was in a medium 4/4, but at one point we needed an extra two
beats (two half notes turned into a half and a whole) so rather than
insert a measure of 2/4 and screw up everyone's bar numbers, I made it
a measure of 6/4. That made it very clear that the beat was a quarter
note, and there were six of them in that measure, rather than whatever
3/2 would have implied (beat is a half note, with three of them? More
confusing for sight reading, IMHO, especially if I beat it in 6, which
I did.)
Well, to me, the confusion comes either way. If I saw 6/4 in that
context I'd think "two beats of dotted half," which seems a much
worse alternative than 3/2 implying "three beats of half note." The
former is completely contradictory of your intent, while the latter
at least lines up the strong accents in the right place.
I would think the smartest thing to do is to use 6/4 with a dotted
barline, or to simply write out what you mean, which is 4/4 + 2/4, or
even 4+2 over 4.
Actually in the case I mentioned 2+4 over 4, but I agree with you that
your suggestion would be clearer still than 6/4 unqualified.
I'm not at all clear on what is wrong with the switch to 2/4. If you
want to make sure that the 2/4 is not landed on like a downbeat, then
3/2 seems to me to work very well.
It was just held over; no danger of anyone treating it like a downbeat
in this case, but I wanted to avoid having to reprint all the chorus
parts that were already handed out with bar numbers already in place. I
hadn't printed the orchestra parts yet, and I wanted everyone's bar
numbers to agree. It was easy to tell the singers "bar 31 is a bar of
6/4" at rehearsal, and in my opinion, nobody had problems with the
beating (or if they did, they didn't tell me, nor screw up!)
. . . There is one that I am playing
right now with a band, ostensibly in 12/8 but at any moment you can
hear each measure not only in 4 (dotted quarters), but in a big 3
(half notes), a medium 6 (quarters), or even a medium-to-small 8 (!)
(dotted eighths) depending on which instrument of the rhythm section
you are listening to at a given time.
I suppose what I am saying is that even though there is ample
historical precendent for 6 generally being in 3+3, just about
anything goes these days.
I don't think your latter example contradicts the point at all.
No, it was just an interesting aside about how time signatures could be
interpreted. (or at least, I THOUGHT it was interesting. The point
certainly occupied a large amount of my attention while we were
rehearsing it!)
I was responding to the idea that a piece that is really 3 half-note
beats would be notated as 6/4, which makes no sense to me at all.
And I responded that it depended on what was around it. If the piece
was consistently stressed in 3 half notes, then I would go with your
earlier suggestion 2+2+2 over 4. If it was just one measure in a bunch
of 4/4 bars, I would probably leave it as 6/4. But I would put the
pulse as the denominator if it was at all possible, which was my
objection (a mild one) to 3/2 when the pulse was obviously the quarter
note.
Once other metrical divisions of the beat come into play, 6/4 has its
merits
Yes, and a historical convention.
and 3/2 becomes misleading and wrong.
Misleading I would try to avoid. "Wrong?" well, I wouldn't say that...
it depends.
Christopher
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